Market Insight

Against the odds: Wayfair art thou, Romeo?

Online retailer Wayfair (W) from Boston’s Back Bay, ’the Amazon of all things furniture’ went public in 2014 attracting a valuation of $3bn. Attacking the $840bn home goods market, destined to grow to some $1.2trn by 2030, according to the company’s projections…
… co-founders Niraj Shah (CEO) and Steve Conine (both pictured below) have focused on gaining market share ever since 2002, when it was founded.
Now worth $15.6bn with its stock bouncing …

The post Against the odds: Wayfair art thou,...

https://theloadstar.com/against-the-odds-wayfair-art-thou-romeo/

M&A radar: MSC & Lufthansa go for legacy Alitalia – just sublime

At The Loadstar Towers, we could barely contain our excitement yesterday when news broke that MSC Group and Lufthansa were going for ITA Airways, the ‘rejuvenated’ Alitalia (whatever is left of it), Italy’s flag carrier.
Which smells of sensational deal-making – strategic, too?
Uhmm 
“Today MSC Group has expressed to the Italian Government its interest in acquiring a majority stake in ITA Airways,” the statement read, adding that Germanys’ Lufthansa, the “project’s industrial partner”, …

The...

https://theloadstar.com/ma-radar-msc-lufthansa-go-for-legacy-alitalia-just-sublime/

Analysis: Mærsk – the vertical consolidation bluff

Hardly a day goes by when the risk of the ocean carriers invading the freight forwarding space, one way or another*, seems to become more real.
(*Either cutting out or simply trying to replace the middleman’s services with their own, if/when asset-light services are added to their offering mix via M&A.)
Background 
And while the narrative is the one promoted by the the most prominent container logistics integrator AP Møller-Mærsk (APMM) in May …

The post Analysis: Mærsk – the vertical...

https://theloadstar.com/analysis-maersk-the-vertical-consolidation-bluff/

Snapshot: DSV – the ‘M&A value’ evaporates

Value, what value?
As if the week didn’t already get off on the wrong foot for DSV shareholders, with another weekly buyback announcement highlighting the trouble that purchasing stock when the market moves against you can turn out to be…
… there was mild encouragement from the average transaction price sourced from Tab.1 above on Monday: at Dkr1,476 a share, it was (almost perfectly) bang in the middle of the Dkr1,350-1,550 support-resistance …

The post Snapshot: DSV – the ‘M&A value’ evaporates

https://theloadstar.com/snapshot-dsv-the-ma-value-evaporates/

Against the odds: US banana importer joins trucker’s FMC action against Hapag-Lloyd

In response to this week’s Loadstar story on South Korean antitrust regulators fining 23 container lines for price-fixing on the intra-Asia trades between 2003 and 2018, one source sent a WhatsApp message to our editorial team that said simply: “And so it begins…”
This is one of the several transport executives who have been engaged over the last few months as expert witnesses by law firms that are beginning to prepare …

The post Against the odds: US banana importer joins trucker’s FMC action...

https://theloadstar.com/against-the-odds-us-banana-importer-joins-truckers-fmc-action-against-hapag-lloyd/

Analysis: CH Robinson – done with creative cash creation. Now what?

One of the most talked about, listed and shining transport and logistics (T&L) firms in supply chain, CH Robinson (CHRW), has been on a roll lately.
Two events – announced two weeks apart in late November and early December – are representative of the Eden Prairie-based company’s financial situation.
One can be split into two capital allocation tiers (dividend and buybacks) yet each is, at least partly (you can choose whichever toy …

The post Analysis: CH Robinson – done with creative cash...

https://theloadstar.com/analysis-ch-robinson-done-with-creative-cash-creation-now-what/

Commodity radar: They’ve got an awful lot of coffee (shortage) in Brazil…

At Premium we sometimes muse that our subscription fee is the equivalent of the price of a cup of coffee per week. But after an extraordinary year in the coffee markets, with prices doubling from $1.24/lb to $2.36 today, that comparison no longer stands.
The spotlights were on Brazil in 2021, where frost and drought damaged the coffee crop. The weather story was as dramatic a narrative as any Brazilian soap opera …

The post Commodity radar: They’ve got an awful lot of coffee (shortage) in Brazil…

https://theloadstar.com/commodity-radar-theyve-got-an-awful-lot-of-coffee-shortage-in-brazil/

On the wire: Wonder-ZIM breaks hearts as China ‘stumbles’ (and why it matters)

“ProShares plans to launch the ProShares Supply Chain Logistics ETF [exchange-traded fund], which aims to offer market participants exposure to stocks involved in the supply chain logistics space” – Seeking Alpha, 12 January 2022. 
Soft Monday coverage cannot refrain from highlighting the tremendous success story of wonder-ZIM – just as going all-in or not, attracted to a single stock or hedging supply chain exposure via a logistics basket (however small or sizeable), …

The post On the wire:...

https://theloadstar.com/on-the-wire-wonder-zim-breaks-hearts-as-china-stumbles-and-why-it-matters/

Against the odds: How cool – DSV a Nasdaq proxy, Mærsk mimics Treasury yields

We need hard, incremental evidence to draw a necessary line between causation and correlation regarding what is to follow in today’s musings – the two can exist at the same time of course, but while causation explicitly denotes a relationship whereby one event is the cause of another; correlation simply implies there is a relationship between two events, and the actual dynamic of that requires further investigation.
And this week’s action …

The post Against the odds: How cool – DSV a Nasdaq...

https://theloadstar.com/against-the-odds-how-cool-dsv-a-nasdaq-proxy-maersk-mimics-treasury-yields/

+ More
Join Our Newsletter
Enter your email to receive a weekly round-up of shipping news.
icon
By subscribing, you agree with our privacy policy and our terms of service.